Partly as a social experiment I mounted some speakers on the lift that anyone can play audio through when in the workshop. Currently you just pair over bluetooth to ‘Transform’ and make sure the power button is on on the amplifier (located on upper right ryobi shelf), volume knob is on the far right. Tried to get a chromecast audio working but it apparently is not compatible with the dms wifi.
How annoyed will other members gets at what others play? How often will members interrupt something being played? Can a free for all audio system possibly be non controversial? How long before people start proposing rules for sound emitting activities in the workshop? There is one way to find out.
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It’s annoying that the chromecast audio wouldn’t work when it is apparently equivalent in terms of chipset to the numerous other chromecasts that work fine. It would get through the setup to the part where I put in the DMS Member wifi connection details, then it would spin for awhile and say that it could not connect to the wifi.
Brandon one thing to try is to try it in the front office and see if it works. (Different AP’s in the front)
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I don’t think we’ll get any complaints with Metallica blasting away. Everybody loves them.
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I would strongly prefer to not be distracted by music while I am operating dangerous machinery in the machine shop.
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To gather data, members should post here when something was playing that was annoying, or if they played something and thought it improved the work environment to have some background music.
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From my perspective any music I can hear while in the machine shop is distracting. One of the keys to machining is being able to hear the cutting, which is generally fairly quiet.
And music is very different from other background noise. Most background noise is intermittent and can be worked around, while music is constant, and because of its nature can cause the mind to focus on it.
So my preference would be for the speakers to have a maximum volume that doesn’t make the music heard much beyond the local area of the speakers.
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Good points on having a quiet environment, would it be possible to objectively measure different sound pollution sources when working in the workshop? Or would that always be a fundamentally subjective thing? The air sensors measure an average decibels over 3 minutes, but obviously can’t characterize how distracting something is.
You can objectively measure sound levels of course, but from my perspective human conversations (and singing) are the most likely to distract me. For most of our members the conversations aren’t really a problem, but I know of one or two who I can hear clearly even when they are on the other side of the room and I am sitting next to the HAAS running its spindle warmup 
I will say, when I am at home, I listen to instrumental music (usually classical or Irish) on a reasonable low volume when machining. But that is a personal thing I think.
Brandon, we shouldn’t be encouraging music to be played loudly anywhere in DMS. People need to be respectful of others and NOT be a distraction.
If you want to listen to music, use earphones.
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Members distracted by something playing out of the lift speakers should log data points in this thread. My hypothesis is that it should be possible to get benefit from the speakers without distracting everyone else. There are scenarios where the speakers would be annoying, but there are lots of other scenarios as well, which will win out?
What will win out is the speakers being uninstalled by someone who gets annoyed enough.
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What is the benefit you expect from speakers?
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My “uninstall” tool of choice is a pair of diagonal cutters. No screwdriver required…
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Y’all aren’t going and throwing the ryobi radio in the trash because Tom uses it loudly while he’s at the space.
I’m calling your bluff. Please destroy some property so we can kick you out.
Blah blah blah, Pearce. Go have some lunch, you’re hangry.
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Tom has never objected the few times I found his radio loud enough to distract me and I asked him to turn it down… If he is not around his radio can simply be unplugged. The speakers Brandon mentioned are installed and since they are blue tooth, we wouldn’t even know who to talk to…
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We will discover the benefit if any, if it has no benefit then no one will ever play anything and I will remove it. It may turn out that my base assumption that all members will act in good faith and not try to intentionally annoy others is faulty.
Feel free to lower volume or hit the power button to turn them off if they are ever distracting.
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Brandon, I may be wrong, and if I am I apologize, but I think this is just another passive aggressive attempt to get Tom in trouble. If, like Pearce above, you have a problem with Tom playing music in the shop, then I suggest you do what I have done the few times I found it loud enough to be a distraction and ask him to turn it down politely. Despite his reputation among some of you, I have always found Tom to be very reasonable when you approach him reasonably.
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